Nowadays, the concern about material safety or nonhazardousness is growing and, in the field of detergents, various attempts have been made to moderate the dermatological actions of detergent compositions which come into contact with the human skin on numerous occasions, for example detergent compositions for washing clothing, kitchen utensils, housing equipment, human hair and body, etc. Thus, for instance, it has been proposed that such compositions should be adjusted to pH 5 to 6 (weak acidity) for bringing their pH closer to that of human skin and thereby rendering their action mild to the skin, or that detergent base materials as low in irritancy as possible should be used as the main detergent base ingredients. Known low-irritancy detergent bases include, for example, amino acid derivative surfactants and alkylphosphoric surfactants (cf. JP-B-50-40125, JP-B-51-42603, JP-B-55-9033 and JP-B-58-27319) (the term "JP-B" as used herein means an "examined Japanese patent publication"). However, these surfactants are disadvantageous in, for example, that when used alone, they cannot always develop their foaming power or detergency to a satisfactory extent or that their solubility is poor, although they are less irritating. In the case of detergent compositions for use in the kitchen, sodium alkylbenzenesulfonates are in wide use as base detergents having high detergency but they have drawbacks, namely, they potently cause removal of fat from the skin, tending to make the users' hands rough.
Therefore, it is a recent trend to use sodium alkylethoxysulfates, which are less irritating to the skin, as basic detergent ingredients in detergent compositions for washing kitchen utensils. Furthermore, the combined use of such auxiliary detergents as tertiary amine oxides or higher fatty acid diethanolamides has been found to produce further improvements in performance characteristics and at the same time render the action of the resulting detergent compositions to the skin milder. For instance, liquid detergent compositions containing an ethoxylated alkyl sulfate and a sulfate of an adduct of polyalkylene oxide with a neopentyl glycol or a polyhydric alcohol are described in JP-A-62-89797 (the term "JP-A" as used herein means an "unexamined Japanese patent application") (corresponding to GB 2 181 152 A), and liquid detergent compositions containing an anionic surfactant, an alkyl tertiary amino oxide, a higher fatty acid alkanolamide and a polypropylene oxide adduct of a polyhydric alcohols are described in JP-A-63-277300 (corresponding to GB 2 205 578 A).
However, under existing circumstances, the action of various detergent compositions to the skin is not yet at a satisfactorily low level although said action is much milder when compared with older detergent compositions.
On the other hand, alkyl glycosides, which are sugar-derived surfactants, are low-irritancy surfactants and it is known that, in spite of their being nonionic surfactants, they by themselves can form stable foam bubbles and, in addition, can serve as foam stabilizers for anionic surfactants. Accordingly, they have currently become a focus of attention. Thus, for instance, foaming surfactant compositions containing an alkyl glycoside and an anionic surfactant are described in JA-P-58-104625 (corresponding to U.S. Pat. No. 4,565,647), liquid detergent compositions for dishwashing with hands which contain an alkyl glycoside, an anionic surfactant and a fatty acid alkanolamide and have high foaming power and detergency together with low irritancy are described in JP-A-62-74999 (corresponding to U.S. Pat. No. 4,732,704) and forming compositions containing an alkyl glycoside, an anionic surfactant and an amine oxide or a fatty acid alkanol amide are described in JP-A-58-186429 (corresponding to U.S. Pat. No. 4,599,188).
However, the performance characteristics of these detergent compositions, though better than those of detergent compositions containing a polyoxyethylene alkyl ether sulfates as a main component, are not yet fully satisfactory. In particular, they have problems in that they are inferior in rinsing property after washing and in feel to hands.